By Stephen Donnelly
There’s been so much talk about a housing crisis in Wicklow, that for many, it’s probably fading into the background noise. But imagine this – you’re living in your home and have been paying your mortgage for years. You have two beautiful children, who are doing well in one of Wicklow’s many fantastic schools. Your partner left some years ago, but you work, you raise your kids, and you’re all doing pretty well.
Then, a few things happen at the same time. The government cuts off your lone parent income support, and mortgage interest rates increase. You’re forced to sell your home, and move into rented accommodation. There’s no social housing available, so you try to rent from a private landlord. But the gap between market rent and rental allowance in Wicklow has become so big that you can’t find anywhere at the maximum price allowable. You’d be able to top up the rent allowance with your wages, but you’re not allowed. So rather than getting, say, two thirds of the rent you need, you get nothing. So you present at Wicklow County Council offices, and declare yourself and your two daughters homeless. And the next day, you wake up in a non-secure, co-ed, homeless shelter. You’ve no way of getting your girls to school, and of then getting to work.
Tell that story to anyone working in the community housing sector, and they’ll simply nod. Because they’re dealing with it every day. So am I, as I’m sure is every other TD and councillor in the county. The officials in Wicklow County Council are, in my opinion, heroes – they’re trying to stop a damn from bursting, and haven’t the tools or the resources or the people they need to do it.
The housing situation in Wicklow has become a crisis. There are over 3,500 individuals and families on the housing list. Every day, parents and their children are finding themselves in the situation described above. There are many contributing factors to what’s happening in Wicklow. Pre-crisis, Fianna Fáil didn’t invest in social housing stock. There is little security of tenure for those in private rental accommodation. The hiring embargo and local government funding cuts mean that Wicklow County Council doesn’t have the resources or enough people to deal with the consequences. Cuts to the community sector mean the bodies dealing with those at risk of homelessness have less resources to deal with more demand. The mortgage crisis has been handled appallingly badly, and so many families in Wicklow lost their homes completely unnecessarily. The €31m for social housing in Wicklow will reduce the existing housing list by about one fifth. House prices in the north of the county have jumped by 40-50%, making home ownership impossible for many.
Rental prices have soared too. I have analysed rental price movements in Wicklow using data provided by Daft.ie. Since 2012, rents have increased by over 25%. For the north of the county, it’s over 30%. But rent allowance caps have remained static. The analysis shows that the gap between rent allowance and actual rent has widened so much in the past three years that right now, rent allowance doesn’t match market rent for any type of property in any of the main towns.
And so this is the situation we find ourselves in. Many people can’t afford to buy a home. Many more can’t afford to pay escalating rents. They can’t find homes within the rent allowance caps, and can’t top these up with their own earnings. And so they are, quite literally, stuck. The stock of social housing is full, and not getting much bigger any time soon.
The solutions to all of this are available. They include: off-balance sheet borrowing structures to build social housing stock; driving down the costs of zoned land via mechanisms like increasing capital gains tax on zoned but undeveloped land; strengthening security of tenure for tenants; bringing rent allowance levels in line with market rents; making the rent allowance schemes more flexible to allow top-ups if desired; fixing the mortgage-to-rent scheme, and so on.
In year five of this Dáil term, it’s clear that the housing crisis is not going to be resolved by this government. Far more creative and ambitious thinking is required that is currently being deployed. Solutions to the housing crisis must, however, become a central theme for the next election, with real solutions embedded in the next programme for government.
Stephen Donnelly is the Independent TD for Wicklow and East Carlow, and a member of the Dáil Technical Group.
